Author's Note: Just a little something I came up with. Couldn't sleep. Blame it on my insomnia. And no, I didn't have anyone specifically in mind when I wrote it, even though I suppose you could take the character to be Tenten. I guess. Or Yugao. Or just one of the nameless kunoichi. Too long for a 'true' drabble, but I didn't want to cut anything out. Felt that it would lose the meaning.
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Moonlight
Sitting perched atop the Hokage Monument, the lone kunoichi adjusted her porcelain mask in vague irritation, then pulled it off completely, instead choosing to hang it from her weapons pouch. No one was going to see her anyways; this hour of the night, no one was going to come to the monument.
Moonlight, she speculated reveals everything a shinobi doesn't want to see. Holding an ungloved hand up, she marveled silently as the shadows cast by the full moon moved fluidly in the dim light. Granted, it wasn't the moon's fault; that was what the moon did, after all.
Shifting her position atop the Nidaime Hokage's carved visage, she looked at her hands. Really looked. Not even the moonlight could hide the years of damage countless missions had done to her hands. Shiny pale white scars crisscrossed the backs of her hands, testament to years of honing her weapons skills. Remnants of tiny pinpricks from countless senbon dimpled the top, a teasing reminder of a dare undertaken as a pre-genin. Dull scabs stood out on her moonlit skin; her recent spew of missions had led to those. A near miss from a stray kunai had caused an arrow-straight line directly over her knuckles. As she avoided the med-nin whenever she could, it, too, would undoubtedly scar.
She turned her hands over, watching as the silent moonlight stretched and elongated at the simple motion. Her palms were no better. Thick callouses on every finger and both palms, the dry skin a constant irritant. ANBU couldn't afford the usage of a moisturizer, not with their usual flowery smell. She ran her thumb over the jagged scar on her left palm... the kunai that had done that had gone straight through and impaled the bone. Still, at the time, it had been a simple choice. Either take the kunai, or Kayumi would have taken it in the eye.
She knew it was there, too. Even if she couldn't see it, it was there. Blood of countless souls stained her hands red. Each and every ANBU had the same stained hands, and not one of them would speak of it. If you did, it was time to leave. If you did, odds are you were about to have a spectacular breakdown. If you did, standard procedure was to call the med-nin immediately.
It wasn't the blood, per se, that bothered her. It was the blood of the people. Everyone she had ever killed had had a mother, a father, siblings, a family, a story. For them, they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had been a decision of protecting her own home, her own family, or taking the lives of those in that wrong place. She wasn't the first, and certainly would not be the last shinobi to have ever had a breakdown.
She held her left hand up, as if to dispel a genjutsu, and looked at her fingers. Each had been broken more times than could be counted. The pinkie didn't straighten by itself anymore without conscious effort. The middle knuckle of the pointer jutted out. Her ring finger was half an inch shorter than it should have been. Her right hand was better, but not by much.
Standing, she let out a chuckle. She had been in ANBU a long time, seen a lot of things. Few hidden villages produced kunoichi at all; traditionalist villages believed the risk was too high. Konoha's kunoichi were far and away the best there were, and they had reason to be. Fifteen years ago, she had accepted an apprenticeship in ANBU. Fifteen years ago, the war between Rock and Leaf was in full swing. Fifteen years ago, she had been an idealist. War quickly morphed her into a realist.
People died in war. It didn't matter if they were young or old, or even a babe in arms. War didn't distinguish between the healthy, the weak, the infirm. Surviving war was a flip of the coin. Oh, you got heads? Sorry kid, your parents aren't coming home. Neither are your teammates. Or your jounin sensei. It seems that damned jutsu the Rock nin had been experimenting with, the one that liquidized the ground beneath your feet then swallowed you to your neck, then let the ground harden back up so you slowly suffocated as the rock hardened and pressed against your chest... well, it seems they perfected it. At least your last surviving teammate managed to get that bit of intel out before that last rib of his cracked and stabbed him in the heart. Tough death for a twelve year old. Too bad that your team ended up guarding that refugee group. Too bad your parents were in that group. Too bad you got sent back on a courier run.
Too bad. Too bad many kunoichi didn't make it to see their twentieth birthday. Most active shinobi didn't see thirty, but the mortality rate for kunoichi was even higher. She was the exception to the rule. At a whopping twenty-eight years old, she was a positive geriatric. Her mind wandered to all that she had seen... the kunoichi targeted just because they were women, the kunoichi captured and brutally raped in sheer defiance of treaties, the kunoichi who had to work four times as hard as their male counterparts, just because they had been born a girl.
She shook her sadness away. It didn't do to dwell on it. Any shinobi, any ANBU, any kunoichi could tell you that. It was best to accept the emotion, use it, let it fuel you. Just because shinobi were weapons, didn't make them tools.
Speaking of weapons...
The ANBU tattoo on her arm throbbed gently. A mission had come up. Not really a surprise, not with what Sound had been up to. She pressed a finger against the sharp edge of her mask and swiped the bloody digit across the tattoo, acknowledging the call. As she pulled her mask back on, the tattoo pulsed a final time. The cold porcelain quickly warmed to skin temperature and sealed quickly to her face with a simple jutsu.
Facing the sky a final moment, she closed her eyes and let the dim light pour over her face, allowing it to silently wash away her sins, her stress, the blood.
Another moment later, and the monument was deserted, save for the stray moonbeams dancing across the silent stone faces.